Attachment styles and marital intimacy among Chinese immigrants

The psychoanalytic speculation that unresolved developmental conflicts with parents may stagnate the usual progression of personality development has stimulated much research interest examining the impact of parent-child relationship on the child's emerging personality and social functioning. Among these studies on early experience, Bowlby's attachment theory is a major systemic explication that has offered much insight on the dynamic nature of parent-child relationships. It has also inspired many studies examining how early attachment styles may affect later interpersonal functioning. Presumably, the emotional bonding in adult romantic relationships may parallel the parent-child attachment process. This assumption has been primarily validated in occidental cultures. However, it has rarely received any empirical support in oriental journals. The present investigation externally validated the attachment theory by testing three hypotheses among 114 Chinese marital couples. The partner-matching hypothesis postulates that people will marry someone with a similar attachment style. The secure-intimate couple hypothesis assumes that secure couples will perceive higher levels of marital intimacy than insecure dyads. The gender difference hypothesis speculates that men's disclosure of their closeness to and dependence on their spouse will correlated positively with their wife's perception of marital intimacy, but wives' disclosure of their closeness to and dependence on their spouse's will correlate negatively with their husband's perception of marital intimacy. Results support the secure-intimate couple and the gender difference hypotheses but not the partner matching assumption. These findings corroborate the ecumenical nature of attachment theory across ethnic groups and across genders. Implications of these findings are discussed.